An Ansoms – Space for Stories | Carrying the pain of others, beyond academic language

In this moving personal memoir, a social scientist who studies resource conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa shares her own story. An Ansoms — professor of social sciences at UCLouvain — writes in Space for Stories. Passion and Vulnerability in Research about the ethical and emotional struggles of her work, about how hearing stories of crisis and conflict triggered her own battle with post-traumatic stress, and about her position and privilege as a white, educated woman working to bridge two continents.

In this sixth episode of Kom Maar Dichter, we move past the back-cover blurb — toward the process, the doubts, and the insights that linger.

An didn't initially intend to write a book. She began writing about her own story at a vulnerable stage of her life, as a way to bring her stories back to herself. Only when friends told her there was more in it than just her own life did the book emerge. It became a kind of "vengeance" of her own way of writing, long locked up in academic language — because in her discipline she had learned that her emotions and her human side were not legitimate.

We talk about the risk of vulnerability (a colleague advised her not to publish before sixty), and how writing was both liberating and exposing. About vulnerability as luxury and privilege, and the responsibility of listening: really listening, giving space to silences, and realising that even a refusal to talk is part of the research. About self-care and secondary trauma — An long saw herself as a kind of "Lara Croft," until her body provided physical proof of what she didn't want to acknowledge.

We also discuss positionality and learning to see privilege, what it means to give a stage that doesn't become violence, and decolonising as daring to touch your own fields of discomfort. About the forest as a mirror and a lesson in modesty, art as a language that expresses what science cannot, and how the writing made An softer — toward herself and her surroundings. Her advice to young researchers: dare to lose time, because true inspiration lies in the unexpected encounter.

Space for Stories by An Ansoms was the starting point for this conversation.

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Come closer. Let's listen carefully.

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In dit ontroerende, persoonlijke relaas deelt een sociaal wetenschapper die conflicten rond grondstoffen in het gebied van de Grote Meren in Afrika bestudeert, haar eigen verhaal. An Ansoms — hoogleraar sociale wetenschappen aan UCLouvain — schrijft in Space for Stories. Passion and Vulnerability in Research over de ethische en emotionele worstelingen van haar werk, over hoe het aanhoren van verhalen van crisis en conflict haar eigen strijd met posttraumatische stress in gang zette, en over haar positie en privilege als witte, hoogopgeleide vrouw die twee continenten probeert te verbinden.

In deze zesde aflevering van Kom Maar Dichter gaan we voorbij de flaptekst — naar het proces, de twijfels en de inzichten die blijven hangen. Dit gesprek werd volledig in het Engels opgenomen.

An had aanvankelijk niet de bedoeling een boek te schrijven. Ze begon over haar eigen verhaal te schrijven op een kwetsbaar moment in haar leven, als manier om haar verhalen terug naar zich toe te halen. Pas toen vrienden zeiden dat er méér in zat dan enkel haar eigen leven, ontstond het boek. Het werd een soort "wraak" van haar eigen, lang in academische taal opgesloten manier van schrijven — want in haar discipline leerde ze dat haar emoties en haar menselijke kant niet legitiem waren.